Inaugural IPNA Mentorship Program to be launched in Calgary
The Saving Young Lives holds the first workshop in Colombia
#IPNAJC wrap up July 2022
Post-doc position available in Sweden
News from IPNA Foundation
Dear IPNA Members,
The IPNA Congress in Calgary is fast approaching, and we will finally be able to meet in person and network with our colleagues from around the world. The Scientific program is outstanding with the most current updates and even if you cannot join us physically, please consider joining us virtually as the lectures will be immediately available online.
Another new initiative by IPNA, the Junior Empowerment and Mentorship (IPNA JEMs) Program will also be launched at the Congress with the first meeting between the mentors and mentees. Our IPNA Committees have been working hard during the past 3 years despite the COVID pandemic, and a big thank you to the Council members and volunteers whose terms of office will be ending this September.
I would like also to commend the members of the IPNA History Project for their invaluable work in archiving our rich history which will not only be a record of the immense contributions by our pioneers, but also an inspiration to future generations of pediatric nephrologists to help improve care of children with kidney disease worldwide.
See you in Calgary!
Hui Kim Yap
IPNA President
Meet the IPNA Members!
Dr. Jun Oh is the head of the Department of Pediatric Nephrology and Transplantation at the Medical Center of the University Hamburg/Eppendorf, which is part of the European Reference Network for Rare Kidney Diseases (ERKNet). From September he will be a new ESPN representative on the IPNA Council.
Dr. Oh has responded to our four questions: 1. What led you to the field of pediatric nephrology?
2. Why did you join IPNA?
3. Would you encourage your colleagues to join IPNA?
4. What is your best memory of IPNA?
1. I had early contact with pediatric nephrology during my medical school years, when I was a graduate student of Prof. Dr. Otto Mehls (Heidelberg) and was immediately fascinated by the combination of intensive care medicine, transplantation medicine and general pediatrics. Due to the excellent mentoring of Prof. Mehls, Schaefer and Tönshoff, I was able to learn from the best in the field at a very early stage.
2. International and national collaborations are very important aspects of my daily work.
I would very much like to give other colleagues these opportunities to improve or facilitate their scientific and clinical work through networking.
3. I will gladly continue to do so and use my networks to support and strengthen IPNA.
4. I have always been fascinated by the numerous international meetings Otto Mehls has invited me to. I always felt it was a great privilege to be able to discuss with experts from all over the world and to learn from their experiences. I would be very delighted if I can also pass on these experiences to younger colleagues and if they also experience the same positive moments.
Dear colleagues,
With less than a month to go until the 19th Congress of IPNA in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, don´t miss your chance to register and secure a long-awaited onsite experience (but also fully available through a comprehensive virtual platform), with the highest quality scientific program. Meet your international colleagues, collaborate and learn how to improve the health of children and young adults with kidney disease.
Saturday, 10 Saturday 2022; 13:00 -14:00 (MDT)
Meeting room: Exhibition Hall D
We really hope to see you there as it will give us a chance to get together and present to you updates from the IPNA leadership and various IPNA Committees. Many of you in our Pediatric Nephrology community have volunteered your time and expertise to work with the Committees, and this has resulted in tremendous achievements despite the pandemic that we are excited to share with you.
IPNA Awards Ceremony
Saturday, 10 Saturday 2022; 13:00 -14:00 (MDT)
Meeting room: Exhibition Hall E
On behalf of IPNA, the IPNA Honorary Members and IPNA Awards Committee is pleased to announce the winners of its 2022 IPNA Awards, which recognize outstanding contributions to pediatric nephrology and lifelong commitment to the profession.
We welcome you all to join the ceremony. There will be a possibility to follow the ceremony online.
Join the IPNA History Session in Calgary
Pediatric nephrology has a rich history of accomplishments and visionaries worldwide who realized the need to develop a new discipline in pediatric medicine which focused on the unique characteristics of kidney development and function in infants and children under normal and pathophysiologic conditions. These early efforts culminated in the first meeting of the International Study of Kidney Disease in Children in 1966, the establishment of “regional societies” of pediatric nephrology including the European Society of Pediatric Nephrology in 1967, the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology in 1969 and the first meeting of the newly conceived International Pediatric Nephrology Association in 1968 followed by its formal establishment in 1971 with Ira Greifer, MD as the first Secretary General. Subsequent regional societies and their numerous partnerships, soon emerged from Latin American, Asia, India, and Australia and New Zealand.
The IPNA History Project’s goal is to preserve and disseminate this important continuing history of our sub-specialty and recognize those who have made it possible to improve our knowledge and care of children worldwide with kidney and urologic disorders. To accomplish this journey, we need all members to work together with their Regional Societies, to gather and identify any memorable information from their experiences with mentors, trainees and patients, including oral interviews, memorabilia from scientific meetings including digital photographs and other archival materials.
Each society might enlist Junior Committee members as Ambassadors to identify visionaries from their Region to be interviewed on their experiences with IPNA and its history.
The upcoming 19th IPNA Scientific Congress this September 7th-11th, 2022, in Calgary, Alberta Canada, will be the perfect venue to re-unite friendships and share stories about IPNA’s history while meeting its mission to advance our knowledge of pediatric nephrology in order to prevent and provide the best possible care to the world’s children with kidney disorders.
Frederick Kaskel
IPNA History & Archive Committee
Inaugural IPNA Mentorship Program to be launched in Calgary
Over the summer, the committee has been working on mentorship pairing based on applications from around the world. All candidates will be notified in the coming days.
IPNA JEMs pairs will be a 3-year term, with mentors and mentees expected to meet quarterly during this period.
We are excited to kick off the mentorship program during the upcoming IPNA congress in Calgary!
Stay tuned for more details.
Photo from the recent IPNA Teaching Course in Paraguay
The Saving Young Lives holds the first workshop in Colombia
Course presenters Guillermo Hidalgo and Bill Smoyer welcomed 18 participants from Central and South America to the two-day Saving Young Lives Project (SYL) workshop held at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, at the end of June. The dean of the medical school, Natalia Mejia, kindly provided access to the medical school facilities to hold the course.
The Saving Young Lives Program (SYL) aims to develop sustainable peritoneal dialysis (PD) programs to treat patients with Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in low resource settings. The project is now in its second phase and is self-financed through an agreement of the four international societies: IPNA, ISN, ISPD, and EuroPD.
#IPNAJC Wrap up - July 2022
Hello #IPNAJC enthusiasts,
We had our 5th #IPNAJC chat on “Ambulatory Bllood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) in children and adolescents: 2022 Update” A scientific statement from the American Heart Association (AHA)” on July 20 and 21, 2022.
PMID: 35603599. Link: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYP.0000000000000215
Pediatric ABPM guidelines continue to have significant weaknesses, including reliance on sex and age or height-based normative ABPM data to define high values at or above the 95th percentile, reliance on both mean ambulatory BP and load (i.e. the proportion of measurements at or above the 95th percentile), and too many confusing classifications that can leave many patients unclassified. To address the above issues, the AHA has issued an update on ABPM in Children and Adolescents in May 2022. The new guideline provides three main updates: (1) use ABPM to confirm the diagnosis of ambulatory hypertension prior to starting antihypertensive medication; (2) provide additional resources for validated ABPM devices; (3) provide a new classification schema- Load is removed from the classification based on the findings from CKiD and SHIP-AHOY studies and single point cut off for adolescents >/= 13 years, similar to adult criteria. Diastolic Hypertensiona nd Nocturnal Hypertension should be used in the interpretation of ABPM.
Wrapup curated by
S. Sudha Mannemuddhu, MD @drM_Sudha
Organizations Partner To Support Haiti Children With Kidney Disease
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and healthcare is a major challenge. It is vital that children dealing with kidney issues receive proper care and three organizations are collaborating to raise money for medical costs and secure donated equipment & supplies to treat children with kidney disease at Haiti hospitals. Political instability, the socio-economic conditions, gang related insecurity, rising food insecurity and malnutrition are significant issues for Haiti. And then there is COVID-19.
These organizations have joined together to support treating children suffering from kidney disease in Haiti.
The Latin American Association for Pediatric Nephrology (ALANEPE)
American Society of Pediatric Nephrology (ASPN)
International Pediatric Nephrology Association (IPNA)
One out of five children in kidney failure receive dialysis treatment and the mortality in care of acute kidney injury is around 40% because of comorbidities and absence of dialysis. “We are working to ensure that children dealing with kidney issues receive proper care. The situation has had a devastating impact on vulnerable children with end-stage renal disease a death sentence.” said Dr. Judith Exantus, pediatric nephrologist and professor of Pediatrics based in Porta-au-Prince. Dr. Exantus is collaborating with the organizations to ensure the objectives are fulfilled.
“Our goal is to provide interim support while the local organizations build their infrastructure to serve the needs of these children. 750 million people worldwide are affected by kidney disease with too many of them children in Haiti and other developing countries. We must help the Haitian physicians provide proper care.” said Dr. Melvin Bonilla-Félix, Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics University of Puerto Rico who serves as the volunteer president of ALANEPE.
